Following on from an earlier blog post where I reviewed some apps that can help you to manage your mental health, I thought it would be helpful to share some more.

1. Buddhify
Buddhify is one of the best mindfulness apps I have come across.  It has over 80 different guided mindfulness exercises which are broken down in to categories based on your need and environment.  Some are more introspective while others make use of the sights and sounds from your present environment.  Most of the guided exercises are around 10 minutes long so they can bit easily fitted into your daily routine.


Once you have a basic understanding of how mindfulness techniques work you can move onto the the solo, unguided sessions.  You can set the length of time you wish to meditate using the timer and you will just get a gentle sound at the start of the time and one at the end.  The app is available for both Apple and Android devices and costs around £2.   Once you have downloaded the app you can access any of the features without needing to be connected to the internet so this means you can use it anywhere you chose.

2. Health Play
Health Play is a health app that works on a similar lines as Epic Win in that it uses the principles of gamification to make completing healthy activities more fun.  The app is free and available for both Apple and Android devices and all you need to get started is a Facebook account.  Having the app linked to Facebook isn't going to appeal to everyone but it does mean that if you have an existing Facebook account then you don't need to remember yet another password.  You have the option of allowing the app to post your achievements to Facebook but this is easy to opt out of depending on your personal preferences.

Where the app is helpful is it allows you to select preset, health related tasks and as you complete them you will earn points.  These points can be used to access more of the features and tasks are grouped into categories such as exercising, mental health and healthy recipes.  Some tasks are more challenging to complete and the idea is that by making a series of small changes to your behaviours you are helping to improve your overall health and fitness. 
 
3. Nightstand
This is a useful app for anyone wanting to regulate and improve their sleeping and waking patterns.  The app offers a selection of relaxing sounds to help you get off to sleep.  These can be set on a timer so they only play for a limited time or you can leave them playing all night.  If you pay for the full app you can link it with other audio players on your device such a spotify, music from your music library, podcasts or apps like libravox.  There is also an alarm to wake you up and you can choose from a selection of sounds to help you wake.  The alarm can be personalised so that it wakes you at different times depending on the day.  The app is currently only available for Apple devices and the full version costs around £3.  

4. Mood Journal
This is a simple mood journalling app that is available for both Apple and Android Devices.  The app costs around £1.50 and is easy and intuitive to use with a feature that allows you to view your mood history over time. 


The app allows you to log your mood on a scale of 1 - 10 and you can log your mood as frequently as you like. You can also add photos to accompany your mood log and the app has the ability to recognise positive and negative hash tags, so you can hash tag away like you would on Twitter, Facebook and other social media.  This feature means you can view images and hash tags in groupings based on their positive and negative tags.  

5. Trello
The final app on this list is not specific to mental health but due to it's versatility it can be really helpful for someone struggling with their mental health.  The app is an organising app that allows the user to create cards, lists and checklists.  There is no limit to the number of cards and lists you can set up and lists can be shared with other users.  This can be helpful for someone who is struggling to remember tasks or is working on something more collaborative.  

Cards can be created to group similar lists together, so if you were to create a shopping list, list of jobs to do around the home and similar lists they could be grouped together on a card named 'home'.  You could create a diary type card with a list for each day of the week and create checklists for tasks that need to be actioned at regular intervals.  You could also use it to log symptoms, keep a checklist of actions that help reduce their intensity and create action plans for tasks that need doing but feel daunting.  When you have completed a task you can archive the task, or if it's a repeating task you can make a checklist that can ticked and unticked as often as you need.  


The app is available for both Android and Apple devices and is also available through a web browser.  The app is free to use and if you have multiple devices these automatically synchronise when there is an internet connection.

All images featured in this post are taken from the app developers own website.  To see more click on the link at the top of each review.